"An
offbeat
melodramatic Western
with added comedy that makes the villain a more
arresting subject than
the hero."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

An offbeat melodramatic Western with added comedy
that
makes the
villain a more arresting subject than the hero. It has
an Oscar
nominated
script by Jo Swerling and Niven Busch that I thought
was only so-so and
is filled with too many clichés; Walter Brennan
won a Best
Supporting
Actor Oscar as the legendary Judge Roy Bean, stealing
the film from his
jealous star Gary Cooper who reluctantly took the part
"under protest"
and had some more heft added to it in a rewrite.
William Wyler
("Friendly
Persuasion"/"The Letter"/"Shooting Straight") goes
slumming from his
usual
high-brow films he was known for and returns to a
Western, the genre he
first cut his teeth on when he started in Hollywood.
He tells the usual
story of cattlemen resenting homesteaders in the
post-Civil War period
and initiating a violent range war. The big-budgeted
million dollar
film
was set in Texas but shot in Tucson. It's based on the
legendary
hanging
judge Roy Bean, but the story is fictionalized.

Cole Harden (Gary Cooper) is a drifter saddlebum
cowboy
brought to
trial in Vinegaroon, Texas, (later to be renamed
Langtry) before the
despotic
Judge Roy Bean (Walter Brennan) on charges of horse
stealing, which
calls
for a sentence of hanging if found guilty in the
judge's barroom which
is converted into a mock court. When Cole observes the
psychopathic
cattle
baron judge is obsessed with Brit stage actress Lily
Langtry, he claims
to have known her and she gave him a lock of her hair.
That's good
enough
to get him a suspended sentence.

After its violent and comical opening scenes, it
drags its
feet with
Cole hooking up with attractive homesteader Jane Ellen
Mathews (Doris
Davenport)
and siding with the homesteaders. Jane's the daughter
of farmer
Caliphet
Mathews (Fred Stone), who gets trampled to death in a
stampede while
trying
to save his ranch that's set on fire by the judge's
henchmen trying to
drive the fence happy farmers off the land. It all
leads to the film's
notable classic climax that has Bean alone in an opera
theater in Ft.
Davis
awaiting a performance by Lily Langtry and as the
curtain is raised
there's
Cole with his guns fixed on the ruthless judge and a
shootout follows
with
the judge dying but not before he meets Ms.
Langtry.

The B/W film was brilliantly photographed by Gregg
Toland,
the cinematographer
of Citizen Kane, who gave it a haunting tone.